Welcome to Great Expectations! This tutorial will help you set up your first deployment of Great Expectactions. We’ll also introduce important concepts, with links to detailed material you can dig into later.

Please follow these steps to get started:

1
Initialize a DataContext

In Great Expectations, your Data Context manages boilerplate configuration. Using a DataContext is almost always the fastest way to get up and running, even though some teams don’t need every component of a DataContext.

2
Connect to data

Once you have a Data Context, you’ll want to connect to data. In Great Expectations, Datasources simplify connections, by managing configuration and providing a consistent, cross-platform API for referencing data.

4
Set up Data Docs

To see how this works, follow these instructions to set up a local static website for your data documentation. Later, you’ll be able to host the site remotely, or integrate content generated by Great Expectations into an metadata store.

5
Set up your first Checkpoint

In normal usage, the best way to validate data is with a Checkpoint. Checkpoints simplify deployment, by pre-specifying the data and Expectations that to validate at any given point in your data infrastructure, along with follow-up actions to trigger based on the results of validation.

6
Customize your deployment

By this point, you’ll have your first, working deployment of Great Expectations. The next step is to Customize your deployment.

Data Contexts make this modular, so that you can add or swap out one component at a time. Most of these changes are quick, incremental steps—so you can upgrade from a basic demo deployment to a full production deployment at your own pace, and be confident that your Data Context will continue to work at every step along the way.